Seen and Done

What a wealth of intriguing artefacts at the British Museum’s Silk Road exhibition! The title is slightly misleading: the Silk Road is being used here as a central part and symbol for something wider: namely the far-reaching and complex exchanges of goods, ideas, art and religion that went on during what we used to call the Dark Ages, roughly the latter half of the first millennium. The exhibition is laid out geographically from Japan to Britain (both of which were well beyond the ends of the Silk Road, but as I say, this is broader). Hard to pick out the best, but I loved the cheery ancient Chinese picture of a horse and camel, and the flagon brought back from Syria by an English mercenary who went to fight for the Byzantines.

The geographical layout perhaps sidelines the chronology a bit, so it can feel as if all these artefacts are contemporary, whereas they cover several centuries of change (not that that isn’t very much spelt out within each location). But all these niggles are minor: this has at worst been a fantastic opportunity to show some marvellous things.